


The Midnight Train Going Anywhere

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Stargate Universe
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, F/M, Pre-Relationship, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 14:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18166196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Writer Belle French meets Nicholas Rush on the Night Riviera sleeper train, and proceeds to try and work out everything she can about him without actually talking to the man. After all, he'd make a very interesting character in her next book. Rushbelle.Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling picture prompt, availablehere.





	The Midnight Train Going Anywhere

**Author's Note:**

> **CW:** Mild blood/gore (nosebleed)
> 
> The Night Riviera is a real service from London Paddington to Penzance. It leaves London just before midnight and takes over 7 hours. I've been on it.

 

Her father would have fifty fits if he knew that she was travelling alone in the middle of the night, but Belle didn't care. The train was almost empty, only one other person in her carriage. It was the slow sleeper down to Penzance, and most of the travellers would have booked beds in the other carriages. Belle had never been able to sleep properly on trains, so she didn't even try, sticking with an ordinary seat. Much cheaper, too.

She had always preferred travelling at night. During the day there were too many other people around, chasing connections and losing their luggage, and just generally behaving badly. At night, everything was calmer, quieter, and there was room for Belle to breathe and daydream. At the beginning of the journey she'd taken out her notebook, intending to write until they reached Exeter at least, but she hadn't even opened it yet. She glanced over at the man in the carriage with her, across the aisle, a couple of seats down. He was paying her no attention, papers strewn over the table and a huge cup of coffee beside him. He was totally absorbed in what he was doing, and Belle found herself making notes about him. He looked like an academic of some kind. She'd met enough of them during her travels to know the type. He wasn't dressed sharply enough to be a businessman, and he seemed to eschew technology like laptops and tablets in favour of good old-fashioned pen and paper. Much like her, in fact.

He was in his forties, Belle guessed, his dark hair beginning to show a little grey at the tips and temples. Studious brown eyes behind his glasses. He'd make an excellent character in her new book. It was almost something out of _Brief Encounter_ , two strangers meeting on a train. Then again, it could also be something out of _Strangers on a Train_ , and that was a lot less romantic a thought. She pushed it to the back of her mind and continued her appraisal of him.

He seemed completely oblivious to her presence and her eyes on him, and she appreciated being able to scrutinise him like this. Everyone else that she had observed as a character study had the usual sixth sense when it came to being watched, and she'd often been caught staring and ended up looking away quickly, breaking her concentration.

He was a good-looking man with a maturity in his features, and for a moment Belle felt a pang of disappointment when she saw the wedding ring. She wondered what his partner was like, trying to paint a mental picture. Probably academically inclined like he was, but opposites attracted after all. If he was in sciences, then his partner would be in arts. He looked like a scientist. Belle would be annoyed now if he turned out not to be. Still, the character that she was building around him was a mathematician, his head full of numbers and not a lot of practical sense. This man looked practical, though. If heavily caffeinated.

The guard came into the carriage to check tickets and tell them that the buffet was closing in ten minutes. Although he seemed oblivious to everything else, the man definitely heard that, and he jumped up, draining his coffee cup and heading out of the carriage for a refill. Belle looked around. She was definitely alone now, and she chanced to creep over to her travelling companion's table and take a look at what he was working on.

She'd guessed correctly - maths, or science of some sort. There was a stack of papers that were obviously graded work, and he certainly didn't flinch in failing his students. The rest of the notes seemed scattered and haphazard, one long run-on equation that stretched over several bits of paper, including a few napkins. His ticket showed that he was travelling from Oxford, and Belle wondered why he was going all the way to Penzance.

"Can I help you?"

She looked up with a start to find that she'd been sitting there opposite his seat for longer than she'd realised, and the man was back. He didn't look put out by her presence, more just mildly amused, and he slid back into his seat with his coffee, taking out his pencil and going back to his equations. The faint scent of cigarette smoke hung around him, and Belle wondered how he was going to get on, trapped in a smoke-free train for seven hours.

"I'm sorry. I'm too nosy for my own good. I'll leave you alone. I just wanted to see what was gripping your attention so much..." She tailed off on seeing his face, the tiniest quirk of a smile amid the increasing annoyance. "I'll leave you alone."

"By all means stay, just don't be distracting."

Belle shook her head and scuttled back to her own seat. Her eyes never left him. The brief interaction had only piqued her interest, because in addition to everything else that she had found out about him, she now also knew that he was very Scottish.

Belle put her notebook down and buried her nose in her novel instead, determining to think no more about him. She nearly succeeded; she’d got three chapters in and had just about forgotten his presence in the carriage with her until he let out a rather squashed and flat-sounding sigh, and she couldn’t help but glance over at him.

He was leaning back in his seat, eyes closed, attempting to staunch what was an incredibly impressive nosebleed.

“Lean forward.” She didn’t even know why she’d spoken; it wasn’t any of her business how he chose to treat nosebleeds which, if his expression was anything to go by, were a common occurrence.

He cracked open one eye and looked at her.

“Lean forward, not back,” she repeated. “If you lean back then the blood starts running down your throat.”

He gestured awkwardly to the paperwork spread out over his desk, indicating that he did not want to drip on it, and Belle found herself leaving her seat and going over to his table, making to move the papers there. He batted her hand away.

“You’ll ruin it,” he muttered, and his voice would have been snippish had it not been so nasal. As it was, he just sounded like a sulking child. Belle rolled her eyes and took his arm, guiding him over to an empty table. Once there was no danger of his precious paperwork being ruined, he dutifully leaned forward and accepted the wad of tissues that Belle handed to him.

“Do you get nosebleeds a lot?”

He nodded. “Too much caffeine and too little sleep. Ever since…”

The sentence tailed off and was left dangling ominously, but Belle didn’t push it, and they did not speak again until the worst of the blood flow seemed to have stopped. She still felt that she ought to make some attempt at conversation. The moment was a tricky one, a moment of weakness and vulnerability for her travelling companion, and everyone reacted to such moments differently. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t want to make an already awkward situation worse, and draw attention to the sudden intimacy of finding oneself in such a state in front of a stranger.

“I guess the combination of caffeine and insomnia explains why you’re in this carriage rather than in a sleeper berth,” she said eventually.

He nodded, moving the wad of tissue away from his nose and checking gingerly that the oozing had stopped.

“Never could sleep on trains anyway,” he grumbled. “I thought that there would be less distractions on the sleeper and I’d get more work done.”

“Same.”

He looked at her, and gave a huff of dry laughter. “I guess I’ve ruined our plans there then.”

Belle shrugged. “I wasn’t getting much work done to start with. At least I have an excuse for not working now.”

The man absented himself, leaving the carriage to go to the bathroom and clean up. Belle stayed sitting at the spare table. Now that the moment was over, she probably ought to go back to her own seat and get on with writing. He probably wouldn’t appreciate her still sitting there when he got back, especially since up until the unfortunate nosebleed he had seemed to be rather productive.

Nonetheless, she did not move, and when he returned, he came to sit opposite her again rather than going back to the papers spread out over his table.

“Thank you for your help.” He was looking very embarrassed, but with a sort of resignation to it, and air of ‘well, this might as well happen’. “Sorry for snapping about the papers.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m the same if someone moves my things when I’m storyboarding plots.”

He raised an eyebrow. “An author?”

“Indeed, for my sins. Arts and sciences, forever destined to be at odds.”

“Would I have read any of your books?”

“That depends. Are you a fan of noir-style detective fiction?”

He shook his head. “Not really my thing.”

“Then probably not.” Belle held out a hand. “Belle French. Or I.L. Chevalier, if you ever do have an urge to read about detectives in trench coats standing under lamp posts smoking cigars in the rain.”

“Nicholas Rush.” He shook her hand.

“So, may I ask what takes you from Oxford to Penzance?”

Nicholas grimaced. “It’s not the kind of errand you share with strangers on a train.”

“Fair enough. I’m hoping to get some inspiration for my new book. Everything’s been set in the city so far, and I think I need a change of scene before it all becomes stale and samey.”

“Well, I hope that the journey proves fruitful.”

Belle smiled. “It has so far.”

There was a pause as Nicholas caught her meaning and he groaned.

“Please tell me that I’m not going to be murdered in the first chapter.”

“No, you’re safe for now, even though your nose did produce enough blood to be a veritable crime scene. The guard’s going to wonder what on earth happened.”

“My wife used to say the same. Every time she saw me with a bloody nose she’d ask who I’d pissed off this time.”

Being a writer, Belle was very good at picking up the nuances of language, and she had to wonder at the use of the past tense in reference to the wife. Still, she’d only just met the man, and as attractive as he was, it wasn’t her place to start asking questions.

The train slowly came to a stop, pulling into the first station, and Nicholas got up to go and sneak a smoke on the platform before it set off again. Belle took her cue to move back to her own seat, and she picked up her pen, words flying over the page as the new character took shape. Whatever the real circumstances were, fiction would always be her saving grace.

The rest of the journey was spent in silence, both of them stealing the occasional glance at each other, and smiling when their eyes met. There was something about being the only ones awake on a sleeper train, alone together in the witching hour, that gave them a certain camaraderie. By the time they were pulling into Penzance, daylight was streaming in through the train windows, and Belle was ready for her bed.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Nicholas,” she said as they collected their bags from the luggage rack and stepped off the train. She rummaged in her pocket. Maybe it was forward of her, but nothing chanced, nothing gained, and she held out her card. “If you ever need a friend in Penzance, look me up.”

Nicholas smiled. “I’ll do that.”

Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe they were destined to be strangers on a train who’d shared a night’s travel together and nothing more. Whatever came of it, however, Belle would always remember him. She clutched her notebook a little tighter to her chest. Her journey was already incredibly inspirational.

 


End file.
